Category Archives: with sugar and cream

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First, I’d like to thank Niki, of course, for sharing her lovely recipes and thoughts with us random Internet people, and giving me this award.

The rules are simple – the awardee (is that even a word? Let’s hope so…) must share 7 things about themselves that their gentle readership won’t already know and then pass the award on to some other inspiring bloggers…

So here goes –

1) As much as I like the ideas and principles – and even the act – of eating healthy, I am still a hard-core junk food lover. I know, I know, like you didn’t know that already.

2) I went to public school through 4th grade and then was homeschooled for the remainder of my education… did you know that? The revolutionaries will be homeschooled…

3) When I was a little kid we lived in this old Victorian mansion that was haunted. For real.

4) I think I might be allergic to shrimp.

5) I studied botany/herbal medicine for years and wanted to become a Clinical Herbalist before I got married and became a food writer…

6) Back home, my brothers and I were certified weather-spotters. Oh yeah, we were spotting that weather like crazy. The highlight of our short but terribly interesting career was a slight twister than snaked itself down in the field across from our house after a huge storm. We were able to call it in and save the day. Sort of.

7) My drink of choice nowadays is Bob Marley’s Mellow Mood tea. It comes in a glass bottle that’s smeared with red, green and yellow and has a big picture of Bob Marley laughing on the front. It’s wicked good, and very mellowing… very. And no, there is no pot involved. I’m so rad.

Does that make *me* cool? No. I was wishing a little of the hard-core-ness would wear off on me, but no such luck.

HOWEVER – I was able to abscond one of my dear one’s old Harley Ts and ‘refashion’ it into something at least semi-cool for the summer. I can try, can’t I?

Are you ready for a post with too many pictures of my chunky self? Focus on the T, people, focus… Sorry about the crappy quality – until I get the money to higher a professional photographer, you will be made to suffer through the products of my iPod camera.

It started out a man’s t-shirt. I changed that.

Talk about Biker Chic…

Aha. Ruching is something new to me. Thanks to thelittle boutique I’m working at (everybody snicker now…) I have gotten quite the eye for fashionable details on clothing. I’ve also got an eyeful of price tags as well, and I’ve determined that I have to just buck up and do the detailing myself. The End.

Anyway -ruching. Done in five minutes with two equal lengths of thin elastic, purchased for about $.07 at the sewing supply store. Wowsers – though you’d be hard pressed to prove it using pictures of me, the slight gathering at the sides of an otherwise straight garment really improves the look!

… now for the really complicated part. I cut out the neck band and hem…

sewed a smaller length of elastic to the shoulder to tighten it up a bit (and, I really like ruching…)

Cut the sleeves so that they are now ‘cap’ styled. I used another shirt as a pattern.

Why didn’t I ever hear about cap sleeves before? They’re a revelation to me and had to be included in this project.

In the end, it was absurdly easy for me to do this and only took about half an hour. Total cost? Well, the shirt was free, the elastic was 7-10 cents and my time is just not that hot a commodity. Compare that, if you will, to the granola looking tops in the store, adorned with their $50 price tag.

I hate it when that happens, but, inspired by my lovely blog-neighbor Castle of Blue (you can read her sweet post HERE) I thought I would make a list of the 11 creepiest things about me.

Because that’s how I roll.

Are you ready?

11. I’m not afraid of being creepy – which, isn’t that creepy in itself?

10. I name everything. Everything. It creeps people out.

9. When I was in fourth grade, I convinced the group of ‘cool guys’ in my class that I was actually a vampire and that my fruit punch was really blood… enough said. All the other girls in class were batting eyes at them and trying to get dates. Creepy.

8. I love Tim Burton, and he’s Super Creepy.

7. Sometimes, when I eat things that have little pieces like rice or ground beef, it goes up my nose from my throat and I have to do creepy things to get them out. I don’t know how it happens – but it does, you can ask Alex. Ok, so that was more *gross* than *creepy* but oh well.

6. When I am pleased with myself over something I have done, I make this uber creepy laughing sound that *sort of* resembles The Count’s laugh from Sesame Street, but not enough to make it *not* freak people out. For confirmation, you can ask my boss, who says, “What is THAT? Are you just being Creepy?” Yes, yes I am.

5. When I was a kid, I fell in love with all the wrong people in Disney movies, like, all the bad guys. My mom was wicked worried… it creeped her out.

4. I have one eye that squints really hard when I smile so that I look like a pirate – my mouth gets all cooked too – it’s creepy.

3. The toenails on my little toes don’t grow. At All. They haven’t for years.

2. One of my most famous parlor tricks is swallowing a piece of spaghetti that I’m holding and then pulling it back up out of my throat. Oh yeah. (Hang in there, it’s almost over)

1. Who knows “Sideways Stories from Wayside School“? Anybody? Anybody? I have read this series an inordinate amount of times. It is, by far, the creepiest children’s book series in the history of the Entire World, And I Adored It. Still do.

The End. You’re free. Go roam in the world among those who aren’t as creepy as I.

I had to choose between writing a traditional English sonnet, or three haiku poems. For me, this was like choosing between having one of my legs cut off, or getting a strawberry ice cream cone; Easy -peasy.

I love haiku in the same way I love Twitter- it causes you to be brief and succinct. There is a challenge to contain your words and force them into saying something BIG in a short way, or something LONG in a brief way, or something POWERFUL in a subtle way. I also appreciate that they are measured by syllables, meter and ideas rather than rhyme. I hate rhyming, not sure why, but there it is. I had a lot of fun coming up with these and have been counting my syllables all day…..